According to chef and food activist Dan Barber, we don't know a lot of things.
We don't know where our meat comes from, we don't know what the animal we're eating ate, and we sure don't know how to get behind the stove and take control of what we put in our mouths.
In this article in The Nation, Barber writes about the "protein paradox," or the huge waste of edible animal parts such as liver, kidney, and tripe. Barber really wants us to like, or learn to like, organ meat—the bits and bobs typically saved for hot dogs, sausage links, and yes, dog food. He hopes that people will eat meat modestly, and when they do, consider the carcass scraps. Ignoring them requires farming output to increase and mass-production practices to remain environmentally toxic.
If you need some hand-holding in the organ meat department, try reading our Nasty Bits column, which spotlights a different meat-bit with a recipe each week. And if you're not quite there yet, but would consider cutting back on the more mainstream meats, try our Meat Lite column.